if 'It Comes At Night' disappointed you, that's your fault
- livia treviño
- Jul 14, 2017
- 2 min read
When I saw "It Comes At Night" a few weeks ago, it reminded me of last year's "The Witch" in many ways. For one, they are both terrifying. Most importantly, the audiences I watched both movies with had the same reactions of immediate disappointment. I can understand if it was because of the ambiguous endings, but they didn't dislike it for what it was, they hated it for what it wasn't.
"It Comes At Night" and "The Witch" didn't rely on classic jump scares or a noticeable villain, like audiences are used to. Now, let me be clear: I love those kinds of movies. The difference is I understand those movies are not the standard we should hold all horror films to. There are tons of classic horror films that don't follow the same guidelines and are just as scary, like "The Shining" or "The Blair Witch Project".
What makes "It Comes At Night" and "The Witch" good horror films are two things: unreleased tension and real-world implications.
In "The Witch", the score is used as a device to build up tension as it increasingly gets louder, which is not unheard of. What's different is in movies like "The Conjuring" or "Insidious", is once the music gets loud enough to build a lot of tension, it's released by a jump scare immediately after. In "The Witch" that release never happens. I was watching on the edge of my seat the entire time because I couldn't rely on the music to give me cues on when I should be scared or relaxed.
In "It Comes At Night", most of the horror element comes from (spoiler alert) the characters themselves. In the end, the patriarch is trying so hard to protect his family, that he shoots and kills a child who may or may not be infected by the zombie-like virus. What's scary is that all along, we thought the "bad guy" was the zombie, but the only thing we should be scared of is each other. What makes it even more unsettling was how similar the movie's universe looked like to ours. Each family felt like my own, which, by the way, is a testament to great acting not seen in many horror films.
I know that it's hard to come into the theater without preconceived notions, but all I'm saying is to give these movies a chance. If you paid attention to the movie rather than waiting for the next jump scare, you might miss a great movie.
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